The Muggle That Could
by gloryblastit
Summary: A muggle girl stuck at Hogwarts finds a friend in Harry, and maybe more.
1. Default Chapter

Harry watched the girl pick at her food, not even pick, really. Just push it around her plate. She made little piles, little spaces of emptiness, and to the untrained eye it looked like she had eaten. But Harry knew better. It was what he used to do…before.

For Harry, now in his second year at Hogwarts, life was divided into before and after, and the great event that divided his life was the owled message that flew into his aunt and uncle's house.

That letter drifted in and saved him. He'd been the red headed step child banished under the stairs.

The girl was in her first year and her name was Crystal Scarlett, as Harry knew, because she was famous before she got here, as he had been. Her parents were frightful wizards, rumored to have dabbled in the darkness but still respected, somehow. The way people speak with forked tongues, golden on one edge and flint on the other. But this girl was in the rumor mill, too. Their strange daughter thought to be mute for the first six years of her life then she suddenly spoke. That was true, by all accounts. The rumor was that she was an abandoned Muggle, taken in by the great wizards and trained in the ways of magic.

But it never stuck. Like teflon, duck feathers, the spells rolled off her and the Muggle rumor gained credence through the years, the momentum of a snowball downhill.

Now she stared at her cooling, congealing food, and Harry noticed the slenderness of her neck and the colorlessness of her hair. Her hair was thin and caught between dark blond and light brown. Her eyes were big and dark, but dark blue or brown he couldn't quite say. She sighed and dropped the fork with a clatter, and she looked like he felt at all those birthday parties for fat Dudley.

"There she is," Ron said in his nasal voice, materializing at Harry's side. Harry nodded and looked at Ron's red hair, always a hair color he had a hard time believing. Ron's hair brushed his eyes, smooth and flat and red as lipstick.

"She's a Muggle, you know," Ron said in that way he had of making everything sound like an emergency.

"It's a rumor," Harry said, noticing the girl's pointed nose, dusting of freckles across the bridge. Ron cocked one red eyebrow.

As they watched her a tear fell and landed on the table and she swiped at it with a napkin.

"I've heard she can't do any of the magic," Ron was taking joy in this, the joy of another's pain and Harry didn't really blame him, knowing how Ron had grown up poor in a big family, second hand clothes and cabbage soup suppers and all that, but he looked at that girl and felt his own before and knew about pain.

"Back off, Ron, huh? What if it is true? How'd you like to be a helpless Muggle here?" Harry's voice was perhaps sharper than he had intended, and Ron winced as though Harry had slapped him.

"Yeah, you're right," He hung his head, the straight red hair obscuring his eyes completely.

She got up quickly, grabbed the tray, scraped all the food into the trash bin. She leveled a look at Harry and Ron. Ron's head was still down and he didn't see, but Harry did.

He wanted to chase after her. He watched her go through the doors that lead to the stairs and he wanted to run and catch up with her, apologize for Ron even though she hadn't heard. Hold her hand, kiss the freckles on her nose.

He sighed, shook his head, headed for class with Ron in tow.


	2. ch2

"She's here," Hermoine said, her voice a high whisper. She was talking about Crystal. Harry gave her a sharp look, and saw Ron's conflict, wanting to gossip with Hermoine but wanting to refrain for Harry's sake.

Harry didn't know why, couldn't explain it to himself, but he felt protective of that girl.

"Uh, I know. We saw her," Ron stammered, looking at Harry with guilt and a 'I couldn't help it' expression.

"You saw her!" Hermoine abandoned her whisper and nearly screeched. Ron nodded compulsively. Harry scowled and looked away.

"In the lunch room, well, she had first lunch with me and Harry…"

"I'll see you two later," Harry said, his expression unreadable. Hermoine and Ron read it anyway.

He had slammed his books down and headed into the hall, making a bee line for the boys' room. Once inside he slammed himself inside a stall, breathing hard. What was the matter with him? What was the big deal about this girl?

As happened sometimes when he was alone Harry remembered Before, his life with the Dursleys. He understood the rationale for that life, so he wouldn't grow up with a swelled head, a sense of his greatness that wasn't earned. He would have ended up a bit like, well, Dudley. But he couldn't help regretting it sometimes, remembering how Dudley hardly ever caught him but oh what happened when he did.

Living under those stairs with the spiders, always second best. Deep in his soul he still felt like second best, this fame and magic was only temporary, maybe a dream, and he'd end up under the stairs again, with taped up glasses and a sore nose from Dudley's punches.

He knew second best, and saw the weight of it on Crystal's face, in the way she pushed her food around. And that's why Ron and Hermoine were pissing him off.

Looking out the window at the emerald lawn, the gnarled ancient oak tree, Harry thought about going back to class, being more forgiving with Ron and Hermoine because it wasn't about them, it was about himself.

Then he saw her, Crystal Scarlett, striding across the lawn, wand in one clenched fist. She looked fragile yet invincible, like those frail ocean weeds nothing can kill.

At the ancient oak tree she stopped, planted her feet firmly apart, and snapped the wand in two. Harry turned and ran, bolting down the hall and out the doors, hoping to catch her.

She stood where he'd seen her last, at the ancient oak tree. Two hectic spots of color had bloomed on her pale cheeks, and she held half a wand in each fist. She heard Harry coming and turned toward him, mouth set, eyes blazing. This close Harry could see her eyes were blue.

"Hey, oh…hi," Harry was out of breath and gasped a bit between words.

"Hi," she said through gritted teeth.

"I'm, uh…Harry…Harry Potter," She rolled her eyes.

"I know who you are. Everyone knows," she said, and Harry thought the same could be said for her.

"Ah, well, yes. Say, why'd you break your wand?"

She stared at it, how the broken edges were jagged. She threw the pieces at the tree, and they bounced harmlessly off the trunk.

"Why not? It doesn't work anyway. I can't get it to work," There was something so broken in her voice that Harry caught his breath. He watched her sit on the ground and cover her eyes with her hands, watched her shoulders shake with silent sobs.

He sat next to her.

"Hey," he said gently, and touched her shoulder, "hey, it, maybe it isn't as bad as all that,"

She put her hands down and looked at him, and her eyes looked green through the tears.

"Oh no?" Her voice was still hard, and she looked off in the distance. Harry followed her gaze.

"By the way, Harry Potter, I'm Crystal. Crystal Scarlett," And she offered her hand after first wiping it on her smock, and Harry shook it and smiled. Crystal smiled back, just a small beginning of a smile, but Harry figured he'd take what he could get.


End file.
